Technical question about RAM/ VST-Live-2 on Macbook pro

VST Live
1

Hi to everyone at the VST-Live-Forum!

I have a question about the RAM-Situation using VST LIVE 2 PRO for live-gigs. I started working on Live-Sets one or two weeks ago. I want to use these setups for a gig as a keyboardplayer who does everything alive. I did one seperated setup for every song and even copied similar setups for giving it another song-name (regarding the setlist…)
No playback-tracks and no clicktracks.
My idea was to use VST-Live2-pro on a Macbook-pro, 24 GB RAM, 1TB SSD etc. as a switching-console on stage for hardware-instruments and VSTi-plugins.

I still use my real instruments (Yamaha MONTAGE-7, CP-88, Roland FantomXR, Oberheim Matrix-1000, for the VSTi-part I have a MOTU 828 (the new one) for audio and a MIO-XL for sending Midiswitches and to play through it.
Two other rack-synthesizers started becoming funny one or two years ago, so I wanted to substitute them by using VST-Instruments.

At the moment I have done 45 Song-Setups and everything seems to work fine. Some of the setups are “only” hardware-based, most of them use one or two VST-instruments.

My question is if I did something wrong. My MacBook-pro offers 24 GB of RAM. In the MB’s activity-screen can be seen that VST-Live uses more than 26 GB of RAM…

The Gig that I prepared the setups for will be one of those gigs where I will play bass with my left hand and everything else with the other hand, so there won’t be many possibilitys to reinstall something or restart the Macbook….
Every setup features the MODO-BASS-VSTi (for the lefthand-bass). Does the preloading bring that VSTi up for 45 separated times for 45 setups? If so, is there a possibility to change that?

The other VSTis are mostly MERCURY-8, MEMORYMODE, POLYMODE (Cherry Audio), KORG Triton (Korg-Collection), and the Minimoog-VSTi from Softube. I don’t think that these are very demanding VSTis.

At the moment I am trying to understand what is going on with the RAM and why it is already consumed by 45 setups, using 6 or 8 different VSTi-Plugins and midiswitching-commands.

I am quite shure that I made some little mistake and there isn’t any problem yet. My idea is to avoid the real problems for the future - especially for the gig that I actually prepared the setups for…
:slight_smile:

Kind regards
Axel

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did you use Shared or Global VSTi plugins?
or 6-8 different / songs / parts for each your 45 songs?

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Hi fkalmus,

I am sorry that I don’t know better but I do not know/ understand the difference between “shared” and “global” VSTi-plugins.
I am still quite new to the VSTi-universe. I actually am a live-player with not very much studio-experience (sorry about that…!) and try to use some VSTi to substitut some of my hardware-instruments (Google’s AI did not understand either and told me something about people, sharing VSTi - I think that the AI did not really get the point…).

I will try to describe what I did - maybe you can find an answer in it:

  1. Regarding hardware-instruments:
    I started “copying” the content / the data from my old MIDITEMP-Multiplayer-Patchbay. I entered programmchanges, Volume, Splitzones etc. into VST-Live and used the MIDI-Part of it like I always used the MIDITEMP.
  2. Regarding VSTi
    I used the VST-instruments from my computer as if I had the real instruments. Programming a setup for one song, I needed a Synthbass, searched one and routed (for example) the MERCURY-8 to a keyboard-splitzone.
    In the next song I needed a Synthpad, chose the MERCURY-8 again, searched for a synthpad, routed it to (…) and after 20 - 30 Minutes I saved the whole project.

Maybe it is problematic to put the whole Songlist for a gig into one File which contains 45 Songs at the end…

(But…) Some of the bands that I play with have a Songlist containing 100 to 150 Songs. I hope that it is possible to work on a complete Songlist like that in VST-Live without killing the Macbook…
:slight_smile:

(I still think that I made a technical mistake…)

After having done 45 Songsets the graph on the activity-monitor’s left side turned yellow - at that moment I was not sure to do everything right.
After finishing the 45-Song-Setlist in one file, I sorted the first set (8 songs), saved everything and restarted VST-Live with that (activated) 8-Song-Setlist. At that moment I saw the activity-graph going back to green and the used memory went down to 9 GB. I think that might be ok.

My question stays the same (without knowing anything about the “shared”/”global”-concept). Does VST-Live build up the same VSTi used in different songs for every song completely (the whole thing in whole size)?

Best regards
Axel

4

Hi @Herr.Meyer !

This is what @fkalmus was asking…

Within a Song there are one of more Parts, if you have more than one Part then they are time indexed so that at a certain point Part1 moves into Part2, then Part3 and so on. Each Part will contain one or more Layers which are your VST instruments (or can be an external device). This allows you to change sounds/VSTs according to your needs. The VSTs of a Layer within a Part are discarded once you move to the next Part (once all notes played in it are released and/or the fade out time in Preferences is expired) but if you have the same VST in a number of Parts then you can use Shared Layers so that you don’t keep loading extra copies of the same VST (copy in the original Part and then paste shared in the next one). Once you switch to your next Song then all of the VSTs in it are released.

There are also Global Layers which are available to the entire Project. You would control these with MIDI messages for Program changes, volume etc. A Global Layer stays alive for the entire Project - not good for memory management.

One Gotcha - you can actually share Layers across multiple Songs, better imho to only share Layers within the Song as this will give you the best memory management.

Some VSTs just don’t play nice in that they don’t unload properly when VSTL disposes of them. In theory, they should unload eventually and the OS will reclaim the memory. There’s nothing VSTL can do about that - as far as VSTL is concerned VSTs are black boxes that it sends message to, it has no access/knowledge to what they do internally.

I hope that makes sense.

1 Like
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Hi CliveJ,

thanks for answering!

Now I understand that VSTL is able to look at the VST-instruments in different ways.

I do not use the playback-parts of VSTL and actually want to use it alive as a midipatchbay with some own sounds (from the VST-Instruments). I always play alive, so there isn’t a need for playbacks.

The Songs that I want to play with my setups get one Part and only a second one if absolutely necessary.

Maybe you know or can see if I made a mistake in my programmings.

What I did, when I programmed the Setups was:

First Setup

  1. Yamaha-CP88: Left Hand: Bass (VSTi MODO BASS) - Right Hand Piano (internal CP88)
  2. Montage: Whole Keyboard Strings (internal Montage)

Second Setup:

Copy and paste from the PART 1 in the 1st Setup to the next one. For another song I needed an Organ-Patch from the Montage, I changed it, changed some other things and saved the whole project-file.

I went on like that for the next 43 Sets and always saved the whole project. If this is a way to stuff the memory, than I found my mistake but lost my idea how it could work for me.

Practical side of VSTi-Problems:
I just tried to open different Setlists one after another. After Setlist 1 (8 Songs) I opened Setlist 2, then Setlist 3 and so on. After having done that I looked into the activity-monitor and saw that used memory raised up to more than 20 GB again - even with the shorter Setlists. It seems that the memory fills itself up or the Macbook does not reclaim the memory (just like you wrote earlier…).

Maybe it could be a better idea to restart VSTL after each set played. I am still searching for the safest way to get gigs done and not to get in trouble with my Macbook’s memory.

Best regards
Axel

6

You shouldn’t have to restart VSTL - each Song is unloaded as the next one loads.

Am I reading you correctly? The Bass is the only VST?

1 Like
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No that’s a missunderstanding but the Bass is the VSTi which I use in every Setup. Some Songs require more than these 3 Patches or different patches but the Bass always stays the same.

So I use some other VSTi too:

Mercury 8
Mercury 6
Memorymode
Polymode
Korg Triton (for Layering…)
Softubes Minimoog

and a compressor-VST to get the Volume changed without saving the same VSTi-patch 10 times with 10 different volumes…

8

…and when you need one of your VSTi you put that in Part1 as a Layer but not in every Song?

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Yes!

All the Layers are organised in PART-1
Every VSTi-Patch gets it’s own layer.

Same with the hardware-patches.

And only if needed.
One song needs a piano, another needs three different analogue-synth-patches and a Rhodes (from the CP88) and so on…

Different volume-levels, octaves, splitzones…

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… you could lose the compressor by using the MIDI volume control in the Layer.

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You are right and I thought about that but some of the “analogue” patches get much nicer when driven through a “vintage”-Compressor-VST (ok - that’s what I thought, when I tried that…)
:slight_smile:

1 Like
12

It doesn’t help that VSTL does not expose the memory used by VSTi to the OS…

I suggest you make up a dummy Project with a Song for each of your VSTi and switch between them to see which one is causing the issue. Also make sure you’re using the latest updates of your instruments.

I have Triton/Extreme in Korg Collection and stopped using them - they would either crash or not instantiate properly. Korgs newer VSTs are much better behaved.

1 Like
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Oh! (1)
The KORG-TRITON seemed functional to me because it offers all the expansions. For the moment I did not use the Triton-Extreme but I thought about it - thanks for warning!
I used the TRITON for layering Stringpatches and for some Organs which did not have to be HAMMOND-Style.

Back to my possible mistakes: Do you think that the copy-and-paste-concept could fill up the memory or could be a reason for VSTi-RAM-problems?

Oh! (2)
You say that one VSTi could cause that RAM-problem? I thought of a routine in the macbook or in VST-L which I perhaps could change…

What I learned is not to use too many VSTi-plugins in my live-sets, because of the memory that is required for that.

14

I had the same problem with Triton and Triton Extreme. Seems to me that they didn’t like being loaded more than once in a Project.

And yes - if a single VST doesn’t play nice and you use it multiple times you’re compounding the problem.

There are quite a few topics in the forum about memory usage, makes interesting reading.

What CPU is your MacBook? I started with a MacBook Air, Intel quad core i7 with 16GB RAM and it wasn’t good enough. Eventually moved to an HP zBook Fury i9 Windows laptop with 64GB RAM and it’s a world of difference.

1 Like
15

Another curious thing which I sometimes have to face when closing VSTL are errormessages. Maybe it has something to do with the RAM-issue…

Sometimes - after closing VSTL normally I get an errormessage that tells me something about an “unexpected shutdown”. There is a lot of text in there but I do not get the point, because I end VSTL correctly without any problems but after closing VSTL that textfile shows up from time to time…

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Hi!

So first create a Global Part from the menu.
In that global part, try to put the synths, you use for every song, or at least it can remain acive all the time.

Then specific VSTi-s, like an organ you use multiple times try
Copy / PasteShared (they will then remain shared instances, so all tiny changes will remain every time when that shared layer is active.

And finally, yes, appears there are plugins (FX, VSTi) they doesn’t really like/work when multiple instances are loaded. They must be in a GlobalLayer and keep them active for the hall project.

:slight_smile:

2 Likes
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I think we all get shutdown errors from time to time. Mostly I see Korg Triton did something so I ignore it.

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Hi fkalmus and CliveJ,

thank you for answering again.

I missunderstood “shared” and “global” - these terms ar part of VSTL - I did not know anything about global parts yet and thought everything has to be done the way I tried to do it.

Thank you for that - to both of you (CliveJ and fkalmus). I have to work on that but as far as I can see - the earliest time to do that will be in January.

Best regards
Axel

2 Likes
19

All good and also you can combine different methods. App gives flexibility :slight_smile:

1 Like